I’d like to think that I’m the ultimate organizer. To some extent, I am. But it’s only for me. In my office here, I have a place for everything, and mainly that’s were they stay. That’s 90% of what I have in my office. But my office also get’s to be the dumping ground of things that are mine, that the wife doesn’t know where to put. So as I type now, I do have things scattered all over my desk.

Now here is what I need to do. I remember reading a few years back about getting rid of things that you haven’t used in a while. I think it was 12-18 months. If there are things you haven’t used, worn, or even thought about after 18 months, consider getting rid of those items. A few years back, I had things in my office, garage (a favorite dump ground of sorts), and closets. So I ended up getting rid of about 2/3’s of everything I owned. I wasn’t really sure if I needed over 50 T-Shirts, 80 pair of socks, and 25 caps. And those are just things I wear. Did I need 3 staplers, 8 computer mice, 20 reams of 500 sheets of paper, dozens and dozens of electronic cords, container after container of computer parts, and the such? In many cases over the years, because I couldn’t find where something was, I’d just go buy another. I’l bet you I had 40 dry erase markers. To goodwill and the garbage most of it went.

But there’s just one problem with that. I did say this happened a few years back, remember? Well if you don’t do it again the following year, you’ll be right back where you started. So the last time I did it was 18 months ago. This weekend, I’m going to go through the same exercise and find things I haven’t used in over 18 months, things I have too many duplicates of, and get rid of it. I do remember though, when I did it last time, I found things that I forgot I even owned, and in my mind was a reward. I’ll report later on what I find.